Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday November 12, 2007 @09:48AM
from the haven't-we-heard-about-this-before dept.

Tha_Big_Guy23 writes "For the first time, and for a limited period only, people in North America will be able to get their hands on the XO, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's rugged little laptop that's designed specifically for children. And for each cutting-edge XO purchased in the West, another will be given to a child in a developing country. For $399, customers can order a laptop for themselves; bundled into the price is the cost of delivering a second XO to a child a poor country."

With so many other options for low cost linux based laptops coming up, how many would lap up the XOs? Yeah some geeks & some philanthropists... the tech loving & God fearing maybe... but will it sell like the Dells?

With so many other options for low cost linux based laptops coming up, how many would lap up the XOs? Yeah some geeks & some philanthropists... the tech loving & God fearing maybe... but will it sell like the Dells?

I think their going for the philanthropist geeks. If they sell a thousand at this price they can move towards lowering the price.

Do they say how much of the money is shipping to the third world country? I would think if they picked one Costal City for the initial recipients, it would be cheap to ship the laptops via ship and have a local volunteer or two distribute them to the children.

Yeah that's about right. I just ordered one. Here are my numbers right from the confermation email. But I think the sipping might be for my laptop not the one being donated. It was calculated after I entered my address

For that price, there has to be either some philanthropy involved, or just some geekiness in messing around with the machine. I got a laptop that is much better for about $CDN 450. If you just need a laptop, and don't care about giving to third world nations, or the geek appeal, there are many other better options. However, with that said, I think that this concept might sell quite a few laptops.

Your are quite correct. You can get for about $400 a much "suitable" laptop. Still, I will get myself one (and donate one) for the very reasons you stated. Philantropy (even tho I'm not rich nor I'm generous) and it looks like a cool toy and a functional one to boot. Separately, none of those reasons would compel me to participate in the program.

First, you make it sound like being a geek or philanthropist are bad things or deviant from normal behaviour.Second, are only the God-fearing allowed to help others? only tech-loving people should play with gadgets? You wouldn't bother helping others unless there was some strong incentive to do so? Your curiosity is only limited to that which you are familiar with? I don't wish to judge you from the few words you have typed in the comment, but the world-view presented within them seems to be extremely narro

No, I don't have anything against geeks or philanthropists... I consider myself to be a bit of both.

I run a group which implements Edubuntu and other FOSS at poorer schools in India for free. So, am naturally interested in XO & all its alternatives out there to better utilize the meager funds (so far zilch) we have.

And I have a vested interested in the success of this buy one donate one concept as it will help groups like ours & many more.

Like I said, I am sure you are a good person in your daily life.Nevertheless, your original comment suggest that you think that the "average Joes" are only charitable if they are God-fearing? That it takes some "special" people to do good for others?

Would you be interested in the success of the OLPC project if it has absolutely zero bearing on your group?

It is not the aim of OLPC to sell like Dells in developed countries, in case you haven't noticed already. Its hardware and software specifications are far

One doesn't have to be a geek to be tech loving... and one doesn't have to be God fearing (/loving) to be a philanthropist.

And I thought 'God fearing' actually means 'God loving'? English is not my native language neither is Christianity my religion, so I might have erred.

And the reason why I wondered if it will sell like Dells is because I inherently want more XOs to sell. And it doesn't matter if my group benefits out of it, heck our group is not for personal benefits in the first place!

Why God fearing? Where does that come from? I would hope that people today would give without "fearing" God. I mean, people do not need religion to teach them what is right, correct? That is what I hear, anyway. Comments like this, however, make me very much question that statement.
By the way, people who give out of love for their fellow man are God loving. Those who are God fearing send money to the Christian Coalition and try to legislate everyone else's behavior.

Actually the Bible frequently talks of the fear of God in a positive sense and being in no way opposed to God loving. A major theme of the book of Proverbs (and the Psalms for that matter) is that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

I think you've missed the point of the OLPC. It's not about a 'low cost linux laptop'. It's a computer designed for group work (mesh network), rugged to take abuse, daylight viewable screen, and educational software.

My main reason for wanting a OLPC XO is that it can be used as eBook Reader, i.e. the screen can be rotated and the thing converted into a tablet, none of the other cheap laptops I have seen so far allow that, heck, even the non-cheap laptops don't allow that, only the really expensive ones. And all the special eBook reader are far more expensive then the OLPC XO. The only other device that seems to come close is the Nokia N770/N800/N810, but they are all rather small.

When it comes to selling, we have to wait and see. Currently the OLPC isn't even sold by normal means, you can buy two for the price of one, but only when you are in the USA and only when you order it in the next two weeks or so, which kind of limits it to how many people can buy one.

I'd love to buy one, but I guess I have to wait a little longer till its even available here in germany.

Yeah, it says it has a touchpad suitable for finger or stylus use, and nothing about a touchscreen. But, since it can convert into a tablet formfactor (if not an actual tablet), and has a directional pad and buttons in the bezel, it should be great for reading ebooks.

I have held both an XO and an Eee in my hands (and a ClassMate, too), and the XO clearly beat the competition in term of built and robustness. It was built expressly for the purpose of surviving usage poor condition (dust, humidity, heat) and are totally centered around the needs of kids, while the Eee and ClassMate where built to be a shrunk-down imitation of full-sized laptop and be as cheap as possible.

As an adult, I prefer the Eee though, mostly because I do not like the XO rubberized keyboard.

Re not being able to run "normal" Linux software, I think it is really a matter of considering the use case and scope of what the XO is trying to achieve. The CPU should be plenty fast enough for a custom web browser, text editing software and IM. "Normal" Linux software, such as Firefox and OpenOffice, do not really scale down to such a tiny screen anyway, so you have to think outside the box a bit when choosing application for these platform. I think power consumption and cost are more important factor

I wonder how long before we see all-in-one chip with CPU + GPU + Flash (32GB) + Sound + 1Gb Net + 2GB RAM. At price around $100 would be huge for low-end computers at K-Mart and Co. Such chip would allow for really small box at low price that works well with all "normal" applications (everything minus games and file servers).
Maybe AMD/Intel don't want to cut own profits by such design, but VIA could try it, however I am not sure they own flash technology (GPU from VIA is nothing special too, but DVI suppo

The XO is not a substitute for a computer. It is a substitute for a text book and somewhat word processor/typewriter (keys are small though).It allows techers to send notes home to illiterate parents, and parents to respond back (camera/microphone). It allows for reading off of the internet, an ebook, or teachers notes.

The cost of text books can be crippling, event he cost of printing could allow one of these to pay for itself with enough use. Simply as a monochrome e-book reader with a pull cord for pow

I also don't see where to buy one... I went to laptop.org, but can only find the 'donate money' area, not somewhere I can buy 2 to get one. (It occurs to me that this might make a good present for my niece.)

Maybe you went to the wrong site, but it's quite obvious here. [laptopgiving.org] $399 for two laptops, one is given to a child in a developing nation. The cost of the second laptop is considered a charitable donation and is tax-deductible. The T-Mobile info is on that page, too.

I see a description of the program, a link to "Find out more" about the T-mobile wireless, and a link to "Please review our terms and conditions," (which is incidentally missing the link to go with the "to review our privacy policy please click here link.")

I don't see any link for actually placing an order though. I suppose i could try calling the number at the bottom during lunch though.

I should have spent a little longer investigating the issue before posting. After examining the source i found a link to paypal using an gif from ebay as the image for the button. However ebay is blocked by websense, so the button isn't showing up at all. I could try to reconstruct the link myself since paypay itself doesn't seem to be blocked for some reason, but it looks like it involves some big ass encryption key, so it's probably easier just to wait for the filter to go down during lunch and order then

Though I do not underestimate the level of need in the so called "poor" world, I wonder why the OLPC folks think everyone in America can afford this PC. We have poverty in America too, and people are living from hand to mouth.

I will agree that what America has is what I could call "material prosperity". There appears to be infrastructure everywhere but people are hurting in the pockets. These days, the American dollar has also taken a hit, so everyday stuff is expensive.

Though I do not underestimate the level of need in the so called "poor" world, I wonder why the OLPC folks think everyone in America can afford this PC.

Um, is there a statement from the OLPC people where they say that everyone in NA can afford one? It seems to me that they only said that individuals in NA can buy one, if they want. There is no comment about the "material prosperity" of everyone on this continent.

Now that I think about it, the title of your comment is "North America has poor folks too!" yet you only reference [the United States of] America. There are a couple of other countries on this continent, too, don't forget.

I wonder why the OLPC folks think everyone in America can afford this PC.

OLPC is a non-profit who will sell large shipments of XO laptops to any educational customer requesting them. Nothing stops the US from putting in an order for a bunch of laptops for underprivileged children. In fact, apparently [wikipedia.org] Massachusetts and Maine are already involved.

Yes, OLPC is focusing their efforts on third-world countries, but also the US education system is mostly ignoring OLPC. The "why" is fairly simple: it's not because US children do not deserve a good education, and not because they wouldn't benefit from computer access. But, the fact is that the US is structured such that OLPC may not be the "best fit." For instance many libraries in the US have computers in them, and many schools do also. It would appear that in the US the effort is being put into these kinds of educational resources. Whether or not that is the best way to spend US education dollars is of course up for debate.

But it's not really fair to imply that OLPC is ignoring US education. As I said, educational institutes in the US are free to make a case for funding such projects. OLPC will gladly ship the units.

But it's not really fair to imply that OLPC is ignoring US education. As I said, educational institutes in the US are free to make a case for funding such projects. OLPC will gladly ship the units.

I disagree. Nicholas Negroponte in the past had flat refused to sell the computer to US schools. Only when it was looking like he wasn't going to get enough orders to begin mass -production did he start to *consider* it. Here's a snippet from a good Ars Technica article [arstechnica.com]:

US society already has high technology. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in North America may help him or her. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in someplace where they don't have computers available at the library down the street (which the kid never goes to because his parents and peers think libraries are for geeks and morons) will help that kid interface with the modern world and help bring up the whole country.

Now, I'm not saying poor folks in developed countries brought it upon themselves, or are willfully poor, but I do think that there is greater room for improvement across populations as a whole in other places.

There's an interesting point. Instead of giving every kid a laptop, why not setup a library for whole communities including laptops in these poor areas? Then everyone including children would benefit. It would be possible for older people to learn about the modern world too.

The other advantage is that you might be able to help more communities with it.

Even though I feel this way, I'd consider buying one of these if I had the money. I wish it was buy one get half. At $300, it's doable for me.

Though I do not underestimate the level of need in the so called "poor" world

The 'poor' in America are ONLY poor in relative terms. In China, which has an up and coming boom economy, I saw people living in such abject poverty and squalor that I can't even imagine how crappy it must be in Saharan Africa where apparently people have it really rough. Panhandlers at the traffic lights here in the US have it easy compared to 95% of the 'working class' people I saw there. However, even the poorest Chinese was busting butt to better their circumstances and even the most ignorant understood that education for the children was the best way to better the entire family. How many of the poor in the US understand that vs how many understand how to wait for the next handout? Sorry, but I've worked too much with the poor in the US and become completely disillusioned with any romantic notions of how all they need is a little more 'help'. They need the help withdrawn so they'll have a little motivation.

However, even the poorest Chinese was busting butt to better their circumstances and even the most ignorant understood that education for the children was the best way to better the entire family.

That's generally true, but part of the reason is that in Chinese culture, you are expected to take care of your parents to a much greater degree than we are expected to here in the U.S. While any decent parent would want their child to have better than what they themselves had, that part of the culture motivates the less decent ones as well.

For those interested, here's a link to the actual order page [laptopgiving.org].

The two laptops will cost $399.00 USD, and shipping is $24.95 USD (for a total of $423.95 USD). Open to residents of US and Canada only. Paypal is the default payment option (credit cards are also accepted). Of that, $200 is considered a tax-deductible donation. Your contribution also gets you 1 year of free Wi-Fi [laptopgiving.org] access at T-Mobile hotspots [t-mobile.com].

The website says that they will try to deliver the laptop before the holidays, but that initial supplies are limited (TFA says 40,000 units in this first month, with 20,000 ready before Christmas), so if you're keen to get one of these things, you should order sooner rather than later.

I'm certainly curious to see how many orders get put in. If a large number of geeks buy these things as hacking toys, then they could very well become the best platform for a variety of tasks. For example, maybe this will finally be a viable e-book reader (portable, rugged, long battery life, display that can be used in ambient light, etc.). Should be interesting.

Can't I just buy one for myself and let the volume productions reduce the price for everyone?I bet if they tried the freemarket approach they could get the retail price down to, oh I don't know, maybe 100USD. They could name it "the $100 laptop"

But the 'Wally World' laptops don't come with a nice warm inner glow of having helped lift some third world child out of information poverty (and you don't get $200 per tax deductable as a charitable contribution)

I picked up a similar laptop around the back to school rush for about $CDN 450. It's a really great laptop. Came with 14.1 inch screen, and 512 MB of ram, but I think everything else was the same. Great little laptop. It was painfully slow with the preinstalled Vista, but I'm running Mandriva with CompizFusion and it works great. The only downside is the battery is only good for about 2-2.5 hours. But I mostly just use it at home one the couch, so really, it actually fits my needs very well.

Yeah, but then you don't really want the laptop, then. The "free market" plan would be to sell the OLPCs at as much of a profit as they can as well as accepting donations and use those profits (and the economies of scale from the increased volume) to fund their 3rd world profit.Instead, they seem to have gone the PBS, "Make a donation of X size and get a fabulous tote bag" except the tote bag in question is an expensive computer (compared to a cheaply manufactured cotton bag). The $400 hundred dollar lapt

Because it's pretty badass. At the outset they didn't intend to break new LCD technological ground with the OLPC, but they ended up doing so to meet the requirements. Also, because it's a good cause? That, and you won't get trampled on black Friday obtaining one.

Because you want to do good (whether OLPC is doing good or not is your call), and because you want a piece of tech history.The XO basically revolutionize the low-end portable computer market. They where the first to talk about ultra low cost, ultra-portable, low-power computing, and as such kick-start the movement which gave us recently the Asus Eee and the Intel ClassMate. Without them, the market would have slowly converge toward cheaper and cheaper hardware, but I think we would still be a couple years

Actually it can be considered to be better than a eee PC which costs about the same (well $100 less). I would love to have a Solid state laptop (no fan!) and a high res monochrome screen (reading!), and low power (green!).

Bad luck I'm in Scandinavia, may be you can buy one and send it to me?

I would not tie getting one laptop to sending one overseas. If they want money to further their mission then just focus on that and drop the gimmick. We do not need production of these devices being diverted to this country, let alone to geeks who need someway to feel good.There are hundreds of good charities to give money to where all the money goes to the cause. I haven't seen a guaranteee of that from OLPC. However I would be more than happy to buy the two OLPCs provided BOTH went to kids and that I

How much does the "normal" laptop weigh? How many moving parts does it have? How thick is the plastic casing? Is the keyboard sealed with silicone? What is the battery life? Can you read the screen in full daylight?

If you want to help a kid somewhere then why don't you donate your $400 to Unicef so it can buy food and medicine for 1000 kids? Or donate it to Amnesty INternational so they can stop kids from being raped and tortured in Cambodia?

Seriously - buying laptops for kids should not be P1 in terms of global humanitarian aid folks.

...you're missing the point. "Why buy an Eee when I could get a normal, higher-powered 15" laptop for less?"

I own an Asus Eee, and it's a near-perfect little sub-kilo device. But if I had a kid in the 3-8 age group, I'd pounce on this OLPC deal so fast my keyboard would smoke. For the same price as the Eee I can get something way more kid-friendly AND support some third-world future 1337 h4ckz0r?! I can't think of a more noble place for my nerd-donation to go.
But my altruism only extends so far. I

Is it guaranteed that my purchase will be matched by the delivery to a child, or am I simply throwing my money into a huge black pit, in the hopes that the number of people who buy one in the US will be the same as those delivered to children, apart from their already-planned deliveries?

... In connection with your payment of US$399 to OLPC Foundation, OLPC Foundation will provide you with one XO laptop, and a second XO laptop will be given by OLPC Foundation to a child in one of the least developed countries in the developing world....

The North American model sadly doesn't come with the hand-crank. It's not clear if those will be available for purchase later on, or if I can use (or mod) my cell-phone hand-crank to work with the XO laptop. Excited to try out the XO though, and I'm very happy to support this project.

They haven't had a built-in hand crank since the first prototype. The North American ones will come with a standard wall adapter. They are exploring all sorts of power generation ideas, such as a yo-yo shaped pull cord generator. Check here for many of the other ideas. [laptop.org]

I'm interested in this deal, but would like more technical specs. In part because I have specific ideas about how I'd like to use one and would like to know if it will work for what I want. Is there a page somewhere (I don't see one quickly) detailing what is and is not in the machine?

With the worth of the US dollar dropping so rapidly, most Europeans could afford to buy a couple of these with the loose change in their pockets. $399 is about 3.99 Euro these days. Maybe a slight exaggeration there, but we're not so far off the 100 Euro laptop:-)

Here's a pointer [olpcnews.com] to a method for ordering one if you are located outside the USA and Canada.

There are also reports [olpcnews.com] that folks in Europe have been able to place orders by phone. This would only work for phone orders - the web site (PayPal) only allows USA and Canadian shipping addresses.

One of the requirements of the software that ships with the OLPC is that it has to be 100% open source. As a result, they can't ship Flash. However, it's not that difficult to install Flash into Firefox yourself.

I'm buying one for my 3-year-old. I can see several advantages to this approach over other laptops. First, I can give her a rugged computer that actually works, something she will surely like as she sees her mom and I using our laptops all the time, and kids learn a lot by imitation. Second, I can continue teaching her about philanthropy - we bought one for her and one for someone else who could use one but can't afford it. Third, to counter the arguments about the US educational system ignoring the OLPC, education begins in the home.

As a programmer, I look forward to seeing the software efforts that are built atop this platform. There's plenty of room for free educational software for kids and this looks like a good platform for it. Surely someone will port the platform stack to a standard Linux distro, and then any software you write for this, you can run on your PC you bought at Wal-Mart.

I'd love to buy one. It looks great; not only would I find it useful as well as being a really cool toy, but I think this is a cause highly worth supporting. Alas, the offer is only valid for people in continental North America (plus island states of the USA). Since I live in the UK, I'm stuffed.

Hopefully at some stage they'll run a European G1G1 programme.

(Actually, maybe the G1G1 programme will show enough demand that some budding entrepeneur will ord

This may seem like a very silly question, and maybe the answer is
obvious, but I haven't been able to find it. But it is of crucial
importance if I'm going to use it myself. While I'm sure it is
theoretically possible given that it runs Red Hat Linux underneath, it
is the first thing I'd want to do with it, and I'd be frustrated if I have to
spend my first hour with it figuring out the secret to unlock it.:)

There is a Developer Console [laptop.org] activity which provides a shell, log viewer, X resource meter, and memory usage meter.

If you want a more adult interface than Sugar, you might be more interested in PepperPad. They are providing an OLPC compatible pre-release containing both a 1.5 JVM and a more adult-oriented environment.

Yes, some child in a developing nation will definitely get one if you order the buy one give one package. You get one too. I have a 4 year old daughter who currently borrows our laptops to play the flash games on PBSKIDS.ORG. I am hoping this will be easy for her to use.

It runs Linux. Good battery life. Interesting screen. Modest CPU and graphics horsepower.

I'd like to know why there will only be limited quantities available for the NA market. Is there some reason for that? Don't they want to accept as many donations as possible?

I strongly considered getting an XO laptop for myself. (Screw the kids, why should they have all the coolest stuff.:-)) I ended up going with the Asus Eee PC because it has a more traditional LCD screen, more RAM, more storage and a built-in SD card slot. Battery life isn't nearly as good with the Asus, and it is only about a

I set the alarm clock for 5:40 (EST), and refreshed the order page a few times... but discovered I had to update my PayPal info, so I missed my chance to have the order in at 6:00 am on the dot;)One thing I'd like this for is to take on my next (very infrequent) plane flight -- the cheapo laptops I have right now have both terrible battery life and more heft than airline trays like. (Oh, and don't open well in that tiny space the airlines call enough room for a passenger.) With the T-Mobile deal, it also

Me too! For my niece, as well. Pitty I can't get one because I don't live in the US or Canada. Pitty also for a child that has to go without laptop because of that limitation. I assume it's a) because of limited manufacturing capacities and b) logicistics. Still sucks though.

It also has twice of just about everything. 4x the storage, 2x the processor, and 2x RAM. Of course, the OLPC has some very innovative hardware (dual-mode display, stylus/finger touchpad, hardware designed for worst-case environments) and is much more power efficient. That said, I'm more than satisfied with my Eee, and it's perfect for what I bought it for (cheap ultraportable to use on my college campus, and avoiding potential trips to the chiropractor), and I'm using it right now.

Considering I've been hearing about the OLPC constantly for years so it's permanently etched in my brain, and this post is the first I've heard of the Asus one, I don't think the upstaging has gone very well.

I'm sure that this has probably shown up in other OLPC arguments, but is this project really what the Third World needs?

That is an oft-cited criticism [wikipedia.org], and not without merit. However, no one is arguing that OLPC will bring about instantaneous change on its own. Certainly this ambitious project is meant to work in concert with other efforts to help these nations.

First, it should be noted that OLPC is targeting developing nations where there is some momentum to improve things, but where access to technological resources and information are limiting growth. They are not focusing on the "desperately poor" countries where starvation is the overriding concern (take a look at the participating countries [wikipedia.org]). Second, the XO laptops are meant to work side-by-side with other forms of relief, aid, education, and infrastructure improvement.

Saying "why bother with OLPC when people are starving?" is like saying "why bother sponsoring a local child to go to a swimming competition when people are starving?" We can simultaneously be philanthropic in different ways to different groups. Moreover, focusing only on the "most dire" problems (and ignoring everything else) is not a good way to help the world as a whole develop into a safer, more equitable place. So, I view OLPC as a part of the overall puzzle: a positive step that can be implemented in some countries, and which will help stimulate those countries to become more prosperous and independent.

Yes it is.I sponsor a teacher in a school in South Eastern Madagascar. By this, I mean that I pay for her board & lodgings. The government pays her salay (approx $500/year) I have done this for the past 4 years.The village where she teaches is 4 hours by 4WD vehicle to the nearest tarmaced road. They have plenty of food, clean fresh water etc. What they lack is the rest of the things that connect them with the outside world. There is 1 TV in the village. I supplied it alone with a solar panel, some car batteries and an inverter. They have a pirated Satellite encoder and can now stay in touch with the outside world. The thirst for knowledge of the children is fantastic. If I were in the US I would buy several of these units for the village.The lack of infrastructure(ie no Electricity) is irrelevant for the OLPC. That said, next year I'm hoping to get a small water turbine installed and connected up to a generator. They will have electric light for the first time. Then we can start to make changes to the houses so that the epidemic of lung diseases can be tackled. This is due to the houses not having chimneys and all cooking is done over an open charcoal fire.I visited the village again in October. I took supplied of pencils and paper (bought in-country) I also took pictures of the children and printed them out in front of them. They took them home to very proud parents.The OLPC concept will help bridge the gap between the 1st world and the bottom parts of the 3rd world.

You may not see this reply, since you're posting AC, but I'll try anyway...

How did you get involved this way? Is there a particular philanthropic/volunteering group you started out with, and then took on this village on your own? Or did you somehow get in contact with them yourself?

I'm sure that this has probably shown up in other OLPC arguments, but is this project really what the Third World needs? I would imagine that it is far more important to get essentials such as medicine, clean water, food, and adequate shelter before we start worrying about something like this.

As an old and wise person once said:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he can starve because while he's been overfishing the lake to exhaustion to supply Kwik-E-Mart, nobody has

You seem to be under the faulty impression that the OLPC laptop is meant to teach children how to use computers. It actually tries to teach them far more basic (and important) skills than that; reading, writing, math, etc. Things that will give these children a way to earn money and escape poverty in the future. That they'll also be able to learn about computers and the internet is just a bonus but irrelevant to whether the OLPC will be succesfull.

As evil as they are, MS is the de facto standard. If you don't know windows you're missing a key skill to join the technology work force. Giving a bunch of kids a one-off linux based laptop leaves out critical skills.

And the way to change the landscape is to get people used to using something different in a place where there isn't a de facto standard.

Or $diety forbid teach them to think and learn so that they can make the choice themselves as to what OS to use when their country becomes less technology challenged.

Education of the end user IS the ultimate goal, but not education in computer skills. The XO laptop is a learning tool, and is likened by its creators to a "pencil". Their goal is to give each child in the developing world their own "pencil" to create with. No one will be reconfiguring their kernels on these things.

Education of the end user IS the ultimate goal, but not education in computer skills. The XO laptop is a learning tool, and is likened by its creators to a "pencil". Their goal is to give each child in the developing world their own "pencil" to create with. No one will be reconfiguring their kernels on these things.

Nobody said they would. What was said was that because these things are not Microsoft then they are wrong.

To go with your pencil analogy here it doesn't matter if you use a Ticonderoga or a Rotring mechanical - it's still a tool to learn with.

When you've learned more and you can make a choice then pick the pencil that suits you. But until then the "pencils" being handed out will suffice in these cases - because the students have no "pencil" at all.

did access to computers increase us students math/language scores? of course not.

No, because we had textbooks. That's the difference.

its books and teachers and basic infrastructure that matter but thats not sexy so gadgets are sold as miracle cures, and geek bazillionaires think they are saving the world.

These laptops are intended as (among other things) a replacement for books. Consider the number of e-books that can fit on the XO's flash-based storage. Now consider the costs of buying that many textbooks, which the child has to lug around with them. As new editions are written, a laptop can be updated with a download over the Internet or a CD-ROM distribution, and you don't have to replace all those textbooks.

its fine if you give them away, slightly dodgy if you ask their poor governments to pay for this toy.